Whistler and Rembrandt and Trump

The Column: 06.09.25

I am not surprised about the rift that occurred between me and Donald Trump, I always knew that his friendships are measured in months and though he said beautiful things about me, called me the Greatest American Writer in History, and he appointed me head of the Department of Government Empathy and I taught him how to tell a joke, which he had never done before, how to hug a small child without terrifying it, how to limit his use of the First Person Singular and try to Decapitalize Key Words and Phrases. I tried to talk him out of the 51^st State, the Gulf of America, Alcatraz, the idea that opposition to Israeli policy is antisemitic. And so, for him to order my deportation showed poor judgment and I dropped the bomb and during Pride Month I showed pictures of Don and his Big Beautiful Bill. Everyone in the White House knew he had a boyfriend and suddenly they were in panic mode.

But unlike him, I have a life. I was in a cab on Ninth Avenue in Manhattan heading for a meeting and I told the cab driver 730 and he thought I said 73^rd and stopped there and I knew it was wrong but my phone rang and it was my grandson who’d come to town with his girlfriend the day before and I was making plans with him on the phone while pulling out my Visa card to pay the cabfare and I opened the door, watching for fast electric delivery bikes in the bike lane and I got out, and realized I’d left my billfold on the seat of the cab and I yelled but a Harley roared past and my grandson was alarmed but I assured him I was okay and I stood there in bright sunlight, dazed, realizing I hadn’t asked for a receipt so I didn’t know the cab number and all my money was in the billfold, plus ID and credit cards, which was a shock but there was nothing to be done, and I called my wife and got voicemail and remembered that she was going to the Frick Museum on Fifth Avenue and 70th, and I headed that way.

It’s an odd sensation, to lose your money and ID and credit cards, and suddenly feel free and happy, a pedestrian like everyone else, and I got myself into a river of humanity, most of them younger than I, and got into Central Park and the Bethesda Fountain splashing and the statue of Alice and the Mad Hatter and the White Rabbit, and over to the Frick.

I forgot what the meeting was that I missed. I was alive in the moment on a summer day surrounded by happy people. I texted my love, “I’m outside, come and find me” and sat down to wait. I knew she was inside the mansion, a woman entranced by beauty and yet she married me, and why should she look at her phone with the Whistler portraits of tall ladies in long gowns, the Rembrandt self-portrait, the Corot landscapes, and Degas dancers, but there she was, smiling, and paid my way in, and I sat in a gallery looking at a painting of a happy girl and her dog, and wrote a poem:

They say life is short but actually it’s as long as it is.
And I wish I could be alone with you for months,
The time would go flying by in a whiz.
And my troubles would disappear all at once.

I’m done with nonsense. I have today to live
And to gaze at you, love, and not look away.
No time for foolishness. To you I give
My entire attention, what more can I say. 

And then she returned from the upstairs galleries. “I’ve seen all I can see in one day,” she said. “I get overwhelmed.” So we made our way back through the park, heading for home on the West Side. Life is precious and one is all you get and why waste it on what makes no sense. Find what’s beautiful and moves you and be happy. I lost my ID but I still know who I am, I don’t consider Bill beautiful and Don is definitely antisemantic and the Ovular Office looks like a roulette parlor and the platinum hair is not a good look for anyone, regardless of sexual preference.

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